Re: Is Sid for broken stuff? Is it too much to ask for testing the packages?

[Bernd Eckenfels <lists@lina.inka.de>]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 02:53:15AM +0100, Marek Habersack wrote:
> trap "mail -s "$MAILSUBJECT" root@localhost < ${MAILFILE}; rm -f $MAILFILE"
> 
> Do you honestly think that the maintainer installed script with that code
> and that the code worked for him? 

if it is only conditionally executed this might be the case, yes.

I do install all my packages before uploading (on a testing system most of
the time). Most of the time I also run:

(last version is on system)
- update
- remove
- update
- purge
- install

But even in that sequence a broken purge script could leave stuff behind,
whih will make a broken install script to work, whereas all other users will
get a installation failure (for example directory missing). Sometimes I may
also miss some update testing, since the current package I upgrade is not
the last released version but my last working version. So if I did multiple
internal versions of a package and the last change introduced an error which
only occurs while upgrading older packages, this would be untrapped.

Just a small note on how complicated it actually is for a developer with a
single pc to test the even most common cases of install/upgrade/remove. Let
alone more complicated cross-version updates. 

Of course packages with less dependecies tend to be very forgiving, but you
never know.

Greetings
Bernd
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